Waters aren’t troubled, but roads are

Published 12:13 am, Saturday, August 15, 2015

If there’s a cautionary tale for students and victims of Connecticut’s geriatric transportation infrastructure, maybe it’s the quarter-mile stretch of fresh, hot asphalt spanning the Mill River in New Haven that after six years and $23 million in cost overruns, was finally reopened to traffic on Friday.

If it’s a harbinger of the challenges up against Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s 30-year vision to rebuild the state’s roads, bridges and rail lines, the already eye-popping $100-billion cost could be a low-ball estimate for the next few generations of taxpayers.

The rebuilt bridge is on State Street, a thoroughfare that dates back to the early European colonists. It’s finally linking pedestrians and vehicles from downtown and East Rock to Cedar Hill and Fair Haven on the east side of the river, which flows down from Lake Whitney to the Sound.

Businesses on the east side of the river have bitten the bullet in recent years, hanging on until the traffic returns from downtown, until Fair Haven residents could again drive over to Modern Apizza on State Street.

Originally budgeted for $5 million during the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, the final numbers, not including the portable podium with the state seal and the rugs for dignitaries — there’s a word — to stand at the news conference announcing its reopening, total $28 million.

Were there some surprises in the project? Yep. Industrial pollution along the river banks; the near collapse of the Interstate-91 overpass above; a huge old water main. It was all there to create obstacles.

“Every construction problem and nightmare that you might encounter on a project of this kind was encountered here over the five- or six-year history of the project,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, whose district includes the bridge.

As traffic roared overhead the other day at least two visitors noticed the snapper blues running up Mill River after bait, or maybe swimming away from their cannibalistic parents. There’s a metaphor for Malloy’s partly blaming the delays on his predecessor, Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

“I can’t claim that I started the project, but I know I had to pay for it,” Malloy quipped. “We’re doing a lot of things here and we should be proud of the effort,” Malloy said. “It’s taken a long time. It’s nice to link the parts of the city and make sure the water supply is protected as well. It’s taken a long time and in many ways I’d say it’s taken too long.”

It all goes back to the state’s rising self-esteem — and reduction in spending — after the embarrassment of the June 1983 collapse of the I-95 bridge over the Mianus River in Greenwich sparked several years of infrastructure investment.

Still, the price of housing in Fairfield County rose to the point where people moved farther out to get more bang for their bucks. Without better ways to handle traffic, or even mass transit options beyond a few bus lines and Metro-North, commuters are left with nightmarish twice-daily bumper-to-bumper rides on the interstates and parkways.

If you want to feel sorry for your fellow motorists — and why would you because they’re such jerks — head to Stamford on the parkway after 4 p.m. on a weekday: the conga line starts at the tunnel in Woodbridge and stretches all the way back to the New York border. It’s not hyperbolic for the governor to say billions of dollars a year are wasted in the bumper-to-bumper jams.

Meanwhile, the train lines were left to literally disintegrate. The swing-style bridge over the Norwalk River, laughably on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1896 and is a linchpin of the Northeast corridor.

The train bridge over the Mianus River dates from 1904, the Saugatuck River bridge in Westport, 1905; the Pequonnock River span in Bridgeport, 1902. Are you starting to see a theme? The Housatonic River bridge linking Stratford to Milford, 1905; Lyme-Old Saybrook bridge over the Connecticut River, 1907; Niantic River bridge, 1907. The Thames River bridge at Groton/New London is a veritable pup at age 96.

“For a long time Connecticut was not investing at appropriate levels to maintain and replace infrastructure,” Malloy said on State Street. “Those days are over. We have bridges all over the state that need to be modernized and upgraded. We have roadways that need to be widened and upgraded, we have rail systems that need to be modernized with increased capacity.”

Malloy said the completion of the State Street rebuild should be emblematic of the next projects in line to improve transportation.

Yep, the money’s going to have to come from somewhere, at a time in politics when the blue Northeast might not make the priorities of Congress. Majority Connecticut Democrats this year have dedicated a portion of the sales tax for infrastructure projects, as a beginning to fund projects.

I was standing around, waiting for the governor to appear for the news conference, when I looked down about 20 feet to the tidal river’s surface and there were dozens of six-inchers hitting the surface, then circling. The only other person among the dozens celebrating the bridge opening, who also noticed the fish, was Malloy himself.

Ken Dixon’s Capitol View appears Sundays in the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers. You may reach him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or via e-mail at kdixon@ctpost.com. Find him on Twitter at KenDixonCT. His Facebook address is kendixonct.hearst. Dixon’s Connecticut Blog-o-rama, can be seen at blog.ctnews.com/dixon/